1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the improved presentation of interactive elements in user-controlled animation environments. The invention is particularly, but not exclusively, concerned with the presentation of interactive animation in video game environments.
2. Description of the Related Art
Video games are a typical and commonplace example of a user-controlled animation environment. A video game presents animation to a user as a composition of graphic elements. The graphic elements include backgrounds, characters, textures and objects that define an environment in which a game is played.
Computer generation and pre-rendering are two known common ways of generating the various graphic elements of a computer game.
Computer generation provides elements that are highly interactive and responsive to player inputs because of the graphic elements being rendered in real-time (or near-real-time). Computer generation, however, taxes computer resources and typically forces designers to compromise the quality of the presentation of the graphics in order to achieve reasonable responsiveness to user inputs.
Pre-rendering is typically used to provide backgrounds, movies and textures that are rendered by the game developer during production rather than while the game is being played. Pre-rendered elements can provide highly realistic and complex displays, but are not responsive to user inputs. Because of this lack of responsiveness, pre-rendered elements are useful primarily for elements that require a level of complexity that is too great for the target platform to render in real-time, and not used for elements such as characters that act out the game-play on-screen.
Many video games combine computer generated characters with pre-rendered graphic elements to implement interactivity within a game. However computer generation is not able to produce quality graphic elements on most gaming platforms, due to current processor limitations. This is particularly the case for complex interactions between characters as is common in any close-combat game and many sports games. As processor designs develop, however, these limitations will become less significant.
Even if a game platform is able to render a high-quality character, making complex, realistic movements; it is very difficult to provide a user with sufficient control over these complex movements with commercially accepted user input devices.
Moreover, it is difficult to detect interaction between graphical elements that are computer generated, for example, when swords clash in a sword play game.
It is an aim of the present invention to address one or more of the above-stated problems.
It is an aim of the present invention to provide an improved presentation of interactive elements in a user-controlled animation environment.